


Call of the Running Tide

by livia_1291



Series: Tell Me What It's Like To Burn [3]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, I have no idea what I'm doing, Lalli either knows exactly what he's talking about, M/M, Water, and living in Mora, at least they have each other?, dealing with tuuri's death, emil doesn't trust lakes, emil västerström - Freeform, emillalli, lalli hotakainen - Freeform, literally none, maybe a little canon divergent?, no beta we die like men, nobody new dies, not him, or is just making stuff up as he goes, please keep the hotakainens away from water, the mcd is just to be safe, this has no plot, who knows - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:47:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24064561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livia_1291/pseuds/livia_1291
Summary: "Water is a threshold," Lalli had told him. "Life and death. It isn’t good or bad. It just is."A plotless exploration of grief, water, and simply being written as a gift for the lovely nikuttek. Thanks for your sweet words!
Relationships: Lalli Hotakainen/Emil Västerström
Series: Tell Me What It's Like To Burn [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1830850
Comments: 14
Kudos: 33





	Call of the Running Tide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nikuttek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikuttek/gifts).



Lalli meets Emil at the lakeshore in the early hours of the morning. The midsummer light makes it impossible to tell exactly _how_ early it is, but the military has trained Emil’s body well - it’s probably around the fifth hour, he thinks. Mist is rising from the glassy water, and the sun is casting the stirring world around them in shades of warm pink and soft gold. 

They don’t have much time. They never do, of course, but that has not stopped them before. Soon, Emil will be summoned for breakfast and roll call, and Lalli will slip off to the quiet darkness of the barracks to sleep the summer heat away. They will meet again when Lalli wakes in the evening, and Emil trudges back from the charred forests, covered in ash and still aglow with the light of cleansing fire. That is how it is for them in Mora.

In the distance, someone is plucking out an aubade on the strings of a kantele, and Lalli closes his eyes, drinking in the morning air. He doesn’t say anything - he doesn’t need to. They both know all-too-acutely that every breath they draw is precious. When he takes off his gloves and slips a too-cool hand into Emil’s, Emil gives it a squeeze, and pulls him just a little closer.

The lake laps like quicksilver at their feet, deceptively docile. They both know better than to trust it - beyond the shore are beasts, water-bloated and violent, and when the summer storms sweep down off the plains, the surface becomes a churning, frothing nightmare that devours anything it touches.

Lalli is familiar with water. He grew up around it, had been protected by it, nestled away in the chambers of Finland’s dark, forested heart. For him, living at the mercy of the water was just as much of a way of life as the flickering lights of summer fires were to Emil. Such a life suited Lalli. In many ways, he, too, was like water: mysterious, graceful, and deceptively deadly.

Emil likes Lalli, (loves Lalli, actually), but he doesn’t like the lake very much. He doesn’t like the way it conceals things beneath a frozen surface in the winter, or the way it can go from gentle to deadly without so much as a tiny warning. He tells Lalli that one night as they sit in a field of purple heather in one of their shared dreams. There had been a herd of elk at the edge of the meadow, wide-antlered and framed with what seemed to be frozen green flames. Lalli had paid them no mind, so Emil ignored them too, watching as Lalli traced the graceful shape of a swan into the earth at their feet.

 _Water is a threshold,_ Lalli had told him. _Life and death. It isn’t good or bad. It just is._

That had been too confusing for Emil to comprehend at first. He had had to think about it for quite some time, to process what exactly it meant for something to be neither good, nor bad, for something to just _be_. Lalli seemed to understand and accept the natural _being_ of things so easily. Maybe it was a Finnish thing. Maybe it was just Lalli.

* * *

There had been once when water had been a triumph for them (though Lalli had been nearly dead on his feet, and Emil had been shocked into a begrudging acceptance of Finnish paganism - _that_ had been fun to explain to everyone.) 

They ran gracelessly from the houses that had hulked so unforgiving and grey the night before, until trees parted and became sand and scrubby marsh grass, and the Danish sea crashed loud in their ears.

“We’re so lucky, I can’t believe it!” Emil gasped, and in his electrifying relief, he had punched Lalli’s shoulder, before quickly correcting himself. 

“Sorry, forgot you don’t appreciate that,” he laughed, dropping his hand to his side and taking a deep breath of salty air.

Against all odds, they had survived the impossible, beaten the trials of a land that knew neither mercy nor gods, and had found their way back to the boundless sea. Emil had never been so grateful to see the ocean in his _life._

Lalli surprised him by returning the gesture before collapsing to throw up again - several days in a coma had not been kind to his physical form. Emil helped him back to his feet, and together, they dragged their tired bodies across the sand towards the welcoming chimney smoke of the distant extraction point.

When they stumbled, worse-for-wear, but very much _alive_ , into the old crumbling barracks, and Mikkel had folded the two of them against his chest, Emil had a moment where he wondered if he might cry with relief. Luckily, Mikkel had let go and ushered them inside to be smothered by a very shocked Sigrun and utterly relieved Reynir, and he was able to keep it together.

The next time they took to the sea, it bore them home, back to safety and civilization, and away from the vicious depths Silent World, and for that, Emil would never be grateful enough.

* * *

The time that the water had _taken_ had been one of the worst moments of Emil’s life. 

He wasn’t quite sure how long it had been since they had taken a desperate stand against the horde of spirits and monsters that had been determined to leave them all broken and bleeding in the forests of Denmark. Maybe a week. Maybe two. No matter how hard he tried to keep track of it, time in the Silent World passed like syrup, slow and sticky.

The night had been pretty, with a bright silver moon and so many tiny stars winking at them from above their heads. A good night for stories - Emil thought it strange that Tuuri hadn’t joined them yet. Sigrun had been regaling them with tales of the wilds of Norway, and Reynir had been watching her with rapt attention as Mikkel translated for him. Lalli had been perched away from the group on a felled stump - Emil had checked on him before going to join the others - but that wasn’t unusual. There had been no reason to worry, (though later, Emil had combed through every detail of that evening over and over again, looking for some sign, something they had missed, something they could have done.)

_A commotion like a thunderclap, a desperate cry for help in a language that none of them could understand. Footprints in the snow, a discarded mask, and then the sound of the waves clawing against a rocky shore._

(And there was Lalli. Lalli, grasping at his throat for air, Lalli, fallen to his knees in the wet sand, keening a wild-animal wail that told all of them exactly what had happened, even without words.)

The water gave Tuuri back as easily as it had taken her. Sigrun had carried her to camp with steel in her eyes, her back ramrod straight as she told Reynir to get in the tank and stay there. 

The ground was frozen solid. There would be no digging, but they couldn’t just _leave_ her. Rituals of the afterlife were important, whether or not one believed in them. At Mikkel’s pragmatic behest, they gathered large, flat stones and created a proper mound, low and sturdy. It would stand for years, Mikkel promised, until the moss overtook it and it became part of the land once more. The words were of little comfort to Emil. It seemed wrong to leave her here, so far from home, so alone, so _cold._

It was best not to think about it - now was a time for survival. Grief would have to wait. The fire that Lalli lit with a choked murmur made Emil nauseous, and when he wiped furtively at the dampness blurring his vision, Sigrun rested her hand on his shoulder, firm and solid. She didn’t try to say anything else. _There was nothing to say._

None of them slept much that night. Lalli refused to go into the tank at all, and instead rested against the side of it, staring out to sea. Emil kept watch from the window, making sure that he remained where he was and did not disappear into the creeping mist rising off the crests of the waves. 

It was cruel that the world kept turning when theirs had stuttered to a halt. It was cruel that Lalli was alone, facing the depth of the night without anyone to hold him up when he stumbled. It was cruel that Tuuri slept under the ice of a place that none of them could reach now, still and silent. It was cruel that despite it all, the sun still rose in the morning.

The world was cruel.

_Not cruel. Not kind, either. The world just is._

Emil did not try to comfort Lalli while he braved the darkest hours of the night. He did not try to tell him that he was not alone - he wouldn’t have understood the words even if Emil had. But if he stroked Lalli’s hair back from his face with a shaking hand and whispered a broken prayer to the gods he wasn’t even sure were listening when the scout finally gave into fitful sleep as dawn broke red and orange over the horizon, nobody would ever know.

* * *

Now, as they stand by the lakeshore in the quiet tranquility of morning, there is neither good nor bad. Things just are, like the unsetting summer sun sweeping the tops of the swaying trees. The light spells opportunity and new chances, for better or for worse.

“You should sleep,” Emil tilts his head to press his mouth to the curve of Lalli’s ear, and _that_ is good. The Finnish words are still strange and heavy on his tongue, but Lalli never makes fun of him for it. Communication is important, and being able to talk while they are both awake is a new privilege. 

Instead, the night scout shakes his head once and presses the length of his body up against Emil’s side. His wordless plea is clear: _just a little longer._

So they linger together by the water, shoulder-to-shoulder, as Emil's day begins and Lalli’s ends.

The lake water lapping the soot off of his boots as Lalli’s clever hands wind into his hair is neither warm nor cold. _It just is_ , he thinks, and when their lips meet in a kiss that tastes of all the words they can never say, Emil finally understands.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Blehhh I am death. Writing this took me way too long because my muse has fled into the forest and I'm not legally allowed to chase after her. I wanted to write something to explore Emil and Lalli's feelings a little more without the burden of an actual plot, and this is what came out of that idea. This piece is gifted to Nikuttek on tumblr - their lovely fanart and kind words gave me just the push I needed to actually finish this.
> 
> I promise I'm working on chapter 4 of LDD, it should be out this month if everything goes according to plan.
> 
> I'm hoping you're all well and staying safe!
> 
> xx.
> 
> Liv


End file.
